An international conference entitled "A Call for Morally Responsible Investment in Israel" was held in Toronto from Oct. 26-29. As Robert Assal the co-coordinator of Canadian Friends of Sabeel stated, "The event was a response to a growing movement among Christian churches around the world to adopt non-violent measures that will influence corporate policy in Israeli-occupied areas."

The thinking becoming more and more widespread is that Israel is becoming an "apartheid state," a view shared by Nobel peace prize winner Desmond Tutu.

One of the participants in the conference was well-known Israeli activist, Minnesota-born Jeff Halper. An anthropologist by training and a former professor at Ben Gurion University, Halper is one of the leading Jewish voices .for peace and an end to the Occupation in Israel. He is the founder of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, a direct action organization established to resist non-violently Israel's demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories (more than 12,000 homes have been destroyed since 1967). The reason for this according to Halper, is purely political: to confine more than three million residents in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza to small, impoverished and disconnected enclaves, effectively foreclosing any viable Palestinian entity and ensuring Israeli control.

Halper said: "All things are turned on their heads. We have a joke that goes like this: An anti-Semite used to be somebody who hates Jews; these days an anti-Semite is anybody whom Jews hate."